religious respects, the
theatres (which, without being known to one another, arose about the
same time) possess, along with external and internal diversities, the
most striking features of affinity, the attention even of the most
thoughtless cannot but be turned to this phenomenon; and the
conjecture will naturally occur that the same, or, at least, a kindred
principle must have prevailed in the development of both. This
comparison, however, of the English and Spanish theatre, in their
common contrast with every dramatic literature which has grown up out
of an imitation of the ancients, has, so far as we know, never yet
been attempted. Could we raise from the dead a countryman, a
contemporary and intelligent admirer of Shakespeare, and another of
Calderon, and introduce to their acquaintance the works of the poet to
which in life they were strangers, they would both, without doubt,
considering the subject rather from a national than a general point of
view, enter with difficulty into the above idea and have many
objections to urge against it. But here a reconciling criticism[12]
must step in; and this, perhaps, may be best exercised by a German,
who is free from the national peculiarities of either Englishmen or
Spaniards, yet by inclination friendly to both, and prevented by no
jealousy from acknowledging the greatness which has been earlier
exhibited in other countries than his own.

The similarity of the English and Spanish theatres does not consist
merely in the bold neglect of the Unities of Place and Time, or in the
commixture of comic and tragic elements; that they were unwilling or
unable to comply with the rules and with right reason (in the meaning
of certain critics these terms are equivalent), may be considered as
an evidence of merely negative properties. The ground of the
resemblance lies far deeper, in the inmost substance of the fictions
and in the essential relations through which every deviation of form
becomes a true requisite, which, together with its validity, has also
its significance. What they have in common with each other is the
spirit of the romantic poetry, giving utterance to itself in a
dramatic shape. However, to explain ourselves with due precision, the
Spanish theatre, in our opinion, down to its decline and fall in the
commencement of the eighteenth century, is almost entirely romantic;
the English is completely so in Shakespeare alone, its founder and
greatest master; but in later po